Titus Livy said, in speaking of Rome, “The greatest things have small beginnings.” This applies equally to pastry, which appears so unworthy of attention at the commencement of the middle ages that nothing seems to announce its high destiny. At first, in the southern provinces, people simply mixed flour, oil, and honey. The Roman school was still in force. The inhabitants of the north had a mind to innovate; they employed eggs, butter, and salt. Then came the idea of inclosing within this paste cooked meat, seasoned with bacon and spices; and, from progress to progress, they at last inclosed cream, fruit, and marmalades.[XXIV-38] We find pastry mentioned for the first time in a charter of Louis-le-Débonnaire (802). It is there said that a certain farm of the Abbey of St. Denis is to furnish, at certain festivals, sixteen measures of honey, eleven hundred oxen, and five hogsheads of flour to make pastry.[XXIV-39] A charter of the church of Paris, 1202, mentions simnels or wigs, under the name of “_panes leves qui dicuntur echaudati_.” Joinville speaks, in “The life of St. Louis,” of cheese fritters cooked in the sun, which the Saracens presented to that king and his knights when they restored them to liberty. And, finally, so early as the 13th century, the _flans_ of Chartres, the patties of Paris, and the tarts of Dourlans, were in great renown; and a charter of 1301 informs us that, at that epoch, several lords imposed on their vassals a tribute of _fugués_, or puff-pastry.[XXIV-40] The cook of Charles V. says, that the word _tourte_ signified a household loaf of a round form; that this name was afterwards given to delicate pastry; and that, by corruption, it was called _tart_ in certain provinces.[XXIV-41] Taillevant speaks of cream, almonds, and rose-water, as the accompaniments of _Darioles_, a kind of custard; and of _Talmouses_, a sort of cheese-cake, made of cheese, eggs, and butter, coloured with the yolks of eggs.[XXIV-42] Platina cites tarts made with radishes, quinces, gourds, elder-berry flowers, rice, oatmeal, millet, chesnuts, cherries, dates, May-herbs, roses, and, lastly, the white, or cream tart.[XXIV-43] XXV. WATER. Thales, who borrowed from Egypt the elements of philosophy, which he afterwards spread in Greece, taught that water is the vivifying principle of all things; that nature is thereby made fruitful; that without it the earth, arid and laid waste, would be a frightful desert, where every effort of man to support his existence must fail.[XXV-1] These ideas, for a long time adopted by Pagan theology, peopled fountains, rivers, and seas, with divinities, and often confounded in the same worship those gods, sons of gratitude, with the limpid waters consecrated to them. The Persians carried their veneration for this element so far, that they dared not wash their hands, and would have preferred being consumed to the very bone rather than dip themselves in a river.[XXV-2]